It is known that, when a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material is exposed to light and then subjected to color-development, an oxidized aromatic primary amine developing agent and a coupler are reacted, to produce indophenols, indoanilines, indamines, azomethines, phenoxazines, phenazines, and similar dyes, to form a color image. In this system, for the color reproduction, generally the subtractive color process is employed, and use is made of silver halide emulsions selectively photosensitive to blue, green, and red, and yellow, magenta, and cyan color couplers in color relation complementary to them, respectively.
In the meantime, in a multilayer color light-sensitive material, in order to reduce the color mixing and to improve the color reproduction, it is required to fix couplers in separate layers. To make these couplers nondiffusible, many methods are known.
Representative examples of these methods include the introduction of a long-chain aliphatic group into the molecule of a low-molecular coupler, in order to prevent the diffusion; and the polymerization as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,211.
Since such couplers themselves are immiscible with aqueous binder (particularly gelatin) solutions, they are generally used in the form of a dispersion.
Thus, as an example of a method for making a water-insoluble coupler into an aqueous dispersion, a method as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,322,027 can be mentioned, wherein a coupler is dissolved in a high-boiling organic solvent, and the resultant solution is emulsified and dispersed into an aqueous gelatin solution.
However, in the emulsified dispersion of the thus-obtained hydrophobic compound fine particles, there is a problem that the particle size is large or becomes large as a result of coalescence/aggregation or the like with lapse of time, leading to a decrease in color density and an occurrence of application (surface state) trouble.